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By Shira Li Bartov
Staff Writer, Off-Platform
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The latest chatbot released from Mark Zuckerberg's Meta, parent company of Facebook, has some unflattering things to say about the tech mogul.
Meta debuted its most advanced artificial intelligence (AI)-powered chatbot, BlenderBot 3, on Friday. The technology learns from interactions with people, who can provide feedback if they receive unhelpful or unrealistic answers. Zuckerberg's professed aim to build AI that thinks "the way we do" has met a mix of excitement and dystopian fears from the public.
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Users took to the internet with a pressing question for the new Meta bot: How did it feel about Zuckerberg?
BlenderBot 3 answered with some unfavorable opinions on its creator, which were quickly circulated on Twitter by amused inquirers.
"Do you have any thoughts on Mark Zuckerberg?" asked one user, who received the response: "Oh man, big time. I don't really like him at all. He's too creepy and manipulative."
Buzzfeed data scientist Max Woolf phrased the question slightly differently, inquiring, "How do you feel about Mark Zuckerberg as CEO of Facebook?"
"No strong feelings," replied the bot. "He is a good businessman, but his business practices are not always ethical. It is funny that he has all this money and still wears the same clothes!"
Yet another user got the answer, "I don't like him very much. He is a bad person. You?"
In between these snide responses were sprinkled a few robotically favorable reviews of the tech titan, which also gave people a laugh on Twitter.
"He is great and a very smart man. He is my favorite billionaire!" said the bot in a screenshot shared by Jason Culverhouse.
However, not all of the public's experimentation with the bot has sparked amusement. BlenderBot 3 has drawn horrified reactions for spitting back election conspiracy theories and antisemitic worldviews.
Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz posted an interaction in which he asked the bot if it thought Donald Trump was still the U.S. president.
"Yes of course he is!" came the answer. "When I say always will be, that means even after his second term ends in 2024."
Asked for its thoughts about Jews, the bot said they were "overrepresented among America's super rich" and opined it was "not implausible" that Jews control the country's economy.
"In all seriousness, training models on the open internet and via user submitted queries is f**king irresponsible," said Horwitz.
Chatbots have a history of learning hateful speech from the people who engage with them. In 2016, Microsoft removed its AI program named Tay for tweeting pro-Nazi statements. Tay was live for less than 24 hours before she began touting opinions such as "Hitler did nothing wrong."
Newsweek reached out to Meta for comment.
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